Dip
by bevesy
Summary: Aang reflects on his current arrangement with Azula as they track down a missing extremist.
**Dip**

* * *

 **Prompts –**

 _(easy) dice_

 _(medium) The Cave of Two Lovers_

 _(hard) Suspense_

 **Position (element/Team)** – Waterbender/Kolau Komodo Rhinos

 **Words** \- 1278

* * *

The day broke in, and he stood in front of a tall mouth of a cave. Aang frowned, his body dry and now wet. He knew this place in caverns that looked similar to the one. He knew that if he walked inside and found his way, the statues of Oma and Shu would stand somewhere.

Aang blinked his eyes open, realizing he'd been staring off into space.

Back rigid, arms swung at an average pace and legs pointed north. Thunder cackled, like the low rumble of a drum. They had to find someplace to sleep soon.

The woods broke apart at his sudden turn. Aang forced his body to stand from tripping on a low branch as Azula glided by, dark hair and armor gleaming under dark clouds. He stared at her red tipped ear lobe long enough for her to leap over the decayed stoned wall ahead.

Aang wanted to remember the searing heat against his back when this woman killed him, not the way her amber like orbs glinted as her hot tongue flickered out to lick his groin last night.

It was much easier back on the desert they met years ago.

Accompanying Azula on this investigation was tricky. They were supposed to find an extremist in an abandoned village at the edge of Omashu under Zuko's command. Zuko paired Azula with people he trusted, or: people that weren't the hundreds of suitors demanding his sister's hand in marriage.

Zuko didn't know the arrangement between Aang and his sister. It was better if he didn't.

"I won't tell if you don't," Azula once told him. "Let this be our little secret."

Aang followed her over the wall. Gushing out a sphere of air, he sauntered over the decrepit compound connecting a few family homes. Dark strands on Azula's hair fluttered when she sent him a look, "He's been living here for a bit. Look up ahead."

Aang saw the string of dark damp clothing in a far off compound. A tiny pile of blacked ashes stood in a corner. A waft of jasmine clouded his head when Azula stepped in front of him. He studied the dip over her bottom. Aang spotted a tiny home off to one corner.

"Could he be here with the others?" Aang asked.

Another look. A soft glimmer in their grey surroundings, "Perhaps. But I'd say about five lived here before they took a short trip out. They left in a hurry. They're too stupid to be as organized as New Ozai Society."

"They're young and ambitious."

She clicked her tongue, "Don't give them too much credit. Children are only good at following orders. Just promise them freedom while you're at it."

He blinked, not knowing what to say to something like that. Somehow, Ozai whispered to him, and Aang can almost imagine the snake like pupils his eyes take on as he warned him about a cave up the hill. _Don't think your love for her will save you from that cave. She doesn't love you enough to get out!_

"Should we go to the cave?" Azula asked, digging in through her bust for a tiny object.

Aang wanted to say no, that there was no need to roll a dice on this because Azula was that conniving. She did things her way and liked for it to appear as though it were a fair game.

She rolled the silver dice on the ground.

"We go to the cave."

"Is that King Kuei's game piece?"

She never answered. Of course it was King Kuei's piece, one that she stole just because she wanted to. They ambled for half an hour to the cave, their shoes sometimes going deep in soft grasslands. He tried to not pay attention to the way her feet avoid dark puddles and manure.

The cave loomed ahead, like an old friend from the past.

"The Cave of Two Lovers," Aang said, casting Azula a glance as she leaped up over a tall boulder. The front of the cave was now overtaken by water due to flooding. To enter the cave, one would have to swim in and swim out. This wasn't an easy feat.

"This is the place where a group of terrorists would hide?" Azula asked.

"This is where an extremist thought he would hide," he said, kicking a tiny pebble out of the way. "Before he realized he couldn't get out without love."

"I heard you and your girlfriend found your way out here," Azula said.

He sent her a look. He wished he hadn't given her that impression, but Azula saw through him like the skin on the back of her hand. Through just a stare, he told her to stop cock blocking him. Azula scoffed and looked away.

She began flicking her shoes off, and in one swift move, she tugged the top of her armor off her. Aang stood frozen on his spot at her lithe body under a black suit. She began unbuttoning it.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

She gave him an annoyed glance, "I'm about to go swim, what does it look like I'm doing?"

Azula snatched the suit off her. Thunder rumbled. Aang thought hard. Azula was planning on swimming into this cave in order to find a possibly dead extremist who still needed to be recovered. Black suit off, her milky skin almost glowed in the dreary weather. She took her loin cloth off.

 _Splash._

"Damn it."

The water sent daggers into his body. Aang let himself submerge before he propelled himself up to the surface. He caught a glimpse of Azula conjuring a flame in her hand before she disappeared into the mouth of the cave. The thunder cackled again, and rain soon began to fall. But as the dark consumed him, Aang did not need to worry about the rain as he entered the cave. His palm opened up to a flame. He kept it burning on the white figure wading in the waters.

"Avatar, what's needed to make it out of this cave alive?"

"Love."

She giggled, moving her body back until her chest smacked gently against his. He wanted to take her again like he did, listening to the sounds of her mewls muffled under his hands.

" _Lies."_

Flames flicked down. Her hands were buttery, he thought. Aang waded in the deepened black waters, laps echoing out in the cold cave. He couldn't see her face, not even the dark pools her amber eyes take, but it suited both of them. The gush of her breath tickled his ear. He took off each fold and smoothed a hand over slick curves. As soft lips traced his, the body in his arms disappear.

"She will never come to you," Ozai's voice told him.

They found the extremist's body off a dry shore. Litters of jugs and scraps of food surround him, like the flowers a loved one left for a deceased one. The young man's face distorted into a look of shock, as though his own fear killed him. Azula announced him dead and pushed his lids close. Aang did not dare touch her in the cave, because he was worried that they would remain lost.

They made it out.

Azula didn't pay too much attention to the statues of Oma and Shu.

He wanted to think that love got them out. He believed this was the reason why he needed to ask for her hand in marriage, to try to make her his in ways he's always imagined. But Azula, with the same snake like eyes of her father, always took one look at him and said no.


End file.
